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1. The real winner was this song, which has haunted me like a recurring dream ever since. Poised, contained, suggestive, European. I have played it non-stop since Saturday night, I'm addicted. Blanche is only 17 and clearly had nerves on the night but what was wonderful is that she didn't panic, actually played on her nerves and used them to remain within herself and her abilities, didn't at any point disappear into the gusts of bombast others did. An utterly beautiful song that should have won. Anyone who voted, who didn't vote for this, should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

2. The actual winner, Salvador Sobral, was already clearly an unctuous twat judging by his performance of his dull sappy shit song. However he truly anointed himself as an utter wanksnap with the crown-of-turds that was his acceptance speech.
I want to say that we live in a world of disposable music – fast food music without any content. And I think this could be a victory for music with peopl…

Here's how hip hop critique works these days. New 'product' gets rolled out on Datpiff or HotNewHipHop. If it's any good, or if it's by an artist who isn't regularly picking up tens of millions of youtube views or regularly instagrams/tweets images of his/her wealth, then it will be ignored by most, pick up some cursory ratings of about 7/10 by site-visitors and then disappear into obscurity. There will be five comments under it, usually bemoaning the fact it's being ignored. Meanwhile some twat called Kevin or called Lil or called Yung or called Nipsey or named after a brand will be picking up millions of listens/hits thanks to some shady sponsorship dealio or the fact that last week he happened to fart near a mic and Drake happened to smell it. The comments underneath this dross will vacillate between about 90% 'STR8 FUEGO' and 10% 'WTF IS THIS TRASH'.

One of the most sublime releases from the current crop of dated-yet-delicious grainy 90s-style hip hop from the East Coast. Hus and Smoovth have been dropping gems both solo and together for a while but this collaboration is perhaps the sweetest set either have ever given us - less confrontational sonically than Westside Gunn/Conway or even Action Bronson/Roc Marc but all the more sumptuously compelling for it. On one level, if you're the kind of hip hop fan that cares about currency (as opposed to Curren$y) and contemporaneity this might come across as too dated for you, utterly shorn of any autotune or any trap dynamics - this is unapologetically dated, grimy, grainy East Coast hip hop. However, what it innately realises is that the sound crafted in NYC in the early to late 90s was perhaps the greatest music hip hop ever gave us - a sound that still sounds just as luridly noir-ish and unsettlingly neon-blin…